I live in Outaouais, on the Quebec-Ontarian border, where I teach French as a second language to federal civil servants. Each year, the federal government invests considerable sums to provide its employees with French language training. While some make real efforts to learn Vigneault’s language and pass their exams on the first try, many others do not take the bilingualism requirements seriously and only succeed after numerous attempts, despite increasingly less difficult assessments. .
In any case, the main obstacle that federal civil servants encounter when they try to learn French, to maintain or regain their lost level is the following: almost everything in the federal public service would take place in English, even at Gatineau, in Quebec territory, where many Canadian government buildings are located. In other words, once the minimum linguistic level to obtain a promotion has been obtained, on paper, for form’s sake, the language of Molière is perceived by many employees as being useless.
Another obstacle mentioned is the attitude of certain French-speaking civil servants themselves towards the bilingualism policy. My students often tell me: “I would like to be able to practice my French in the office, but when I approach my French-speaking colleagues in their language, seeing my difficulties or my lack of confidence, they almost always respond to me in English, without doubt to go faster, to be more efficient. » Perhaps also because of a more or less conscious inferiority complex, one would be tempted to add.
Certain anecdotes are revealing in this regard. One day, while I was walking through the Global Affairs Canada offices in Gatineau with an allophone student who had an intermediate-advanced level in French, which was her third language, what was my surprise when I saw her French-speaking manager approach him by saying: “Hey! How is the French training ? »
If French is not seen as useful and rewarding for federal civil servants, even French-speaking ones, why would they bother to speak it in the office?
Aside from more or less bilingual team meetings where the manager will be content to sprinkle a little French here and there, it seems that French in federal institutions is most of the time reduced to informal conversations between French speakers in the cafeteria or around the coffee machine, situations that are increasingly rare with the generalization of teleworking.
One day we will have to face this reality: yes, bilingualism exists to a certain point in the federal public service, and as long as Quebec is part of Canada, it will have to be demanded, but it too often remains marginal , superficial and is often practiced in one direction, from French to English.
If the federal government is the economic engine of the Ottawa-Gatineau region, we do not realize to what extent it can also be, in fact, a gigantic Anglicization machine for the Outaouais and French Ontario.